First Year Reminiscences
Stories by first year beekeepers describing some of their interesting experiences.
Why I Painted my Bee Hives Green, by Gina Gallucci
I
took the advice of my
beekeeper mentors and decided to place my first hive in an out-of-the-way
location, so as to not rile up the neighbors and their potential fears of being
stung. I have oodles of English Ivy in the chosen area and went with this color
scheme. I took two leaves of ivy to my neighborhood hardware store, one a
bright, fresh green and one an older, deeper green. I decided that the older
color was more prevalent throughout the year and had a small batch of paint
mixed to match it exactly. I painted two coats and let it dry. I thought it
depressingly dull for a brand new house for my brand new bees! I started again
by adding a short brush dip into some old white paint and then an even shorter
dip into my English Ivy green, and proceeded to drop and swirl this lighter
green on several spots per side to break up the solid green. It worked well. I
was pleased.
I shared my beekeeping adventures, distant views of the hive, and honey with many of my neighbors, first among them, the eldest, most respected women, who were tremendously supportive and excited for me and our neighborhood to have honey bees. My friend and neighbor, Pegi, told me that she had watched her father enjoy beekeeping as a hobbyist when she was a youngster.
My second year I added a second hive and because I had no reason to worry that people could see the hive, I painted it a luscious shade I’ll call Tanzanite Blue. I added diamonds and circles for texture. It’s fit for its Russian queen I call Anastasia. My first hive, also with a Russian queen that I named Natasha, remains deep green with swirls, and they both look interesting in the ivy, for now. I may redecorate next year.
Beeline to the High Dive , by Jay Parsons
We are charging headlong into completing our first sixty days of bees-ness this week. We didn't see any “No Jumping or Diving” signs, so we just went headfirst! We took the Metro Short Course back in January (where we even won a veil and book as door prizes!). We attended the Beekeeping Institute at Young Harris in May, did a wonderful guided hive inspection at the Atlanta Botanical Garden, and have attended beekeeper club meetings. We have been reading a lot to help sort out some of information floating around. I learned to be careful of internet information: One of the recommendations I came across was to paint the inside of the boxes. This didn't seem right to me, so I asked around, and everyone said no, you never paint the inside! I’m not sure, but there may not be any two beekeepers who raise bees the same way.
Because I am a woodworker craftsman, one of the attractive parts of all this for me has been making all our hive boxes myself. I was apprehensive at first – all the fractions involved! -- but all the parts I made meshed perfectly with the production models of frames and bases. That was a crowning joy. I really came away with an appreciation for what beekeepers call bee space. We picked up our first nuc on April 22 and installed it on the 23rd.
My wife thinks I pester the bees too much, and maybe she’s right. I don’t take the hive apart and inspect it often, but I do go out everyday and look at them. My worst fear is that they are going to swarm and leave the frames empty. In the morning they are huddled up. Later on they are flying in and out faster than Hartsfield-Jackson and O’Hare combined. It really worries me when they fly all around the hive in sort of a random manner and when they collect in those beards outside. Are they getting ready to swarm?
I also check the hive, maybe even twice a day, to see if they need more sugar syrup. They are just starting out so I don't want to have them struggle too much. At first it took them a week to drink a quart of syrup, but a few weeks ago they were doing two quarts a day. We have a large fish pond close by that seems to satisfy any need for water. I have seen them on the lily pads, drinking.
They have multiplied greatly. I manipulated the lower hive body brood frames in the beginning very judiciously, moving the outside frames in to the third position a couple of times before the bees seemed to have worked all the frames nearly equally. I don't want to get any crowding going, so I added a second deep hive body on May 9. That didn't take long to work and fill that, mostly with honey.
I added a medium super on June 10. Things look good. But what about those beetles and mites lurking in the corners? We will have to be watchful.
Bringing Home the Bees , by Linda Tillman
When I picked up the phone, I heard the words I’d been waiting to hear for months, “You can come and pick up your bees tonight.” Yes, you heard accurately: “Tonight.” (Bees are picked up at night because they are safely ensconced in their home and are not out flying.)
I had taken the Metro Atlanta Beekeeping Short Course in January and now it was the Saturday before Easter, April 15. I constructed my hives, using hammers, nails, and words I don’t generally use. I had built many, many frames and installed foundation in the frames. I painted the hive boxes lovely shades of pale pinks and yellows, left over from re-doing my sun porch. I named the hives Destin and Bermuda, based on their pastel tints. All that was missing were the bees.
To pick up my two nucs of
bees I had to drive about 35 minutes south of my house. As I arrived in the
dark at the appointed time of 9:30 PM, I found that I was one of many people
picking up nucs in the night. We all lined up and waited for P.N. Williams,
clad in everyday clothes with a head lamp lighting his interactions with the
nucs, to invite us to come get our bees. At last he nodded to me.
“You’re next, Ma’am,” he said and I practically skipped over to where he stood. He snapped a bungee cord around a screen door on the front of the nuc.
“I’m in a car, not a truck. Is that going to be OK?” I asked him.
“Just don’t go over any hard bumps and you’ll be fine,” he said.
Reassured, I carried the nuc to the back of the van and put it inside. I went back for the second nuc and he did the whole routine again, snapping the bungee cord around the screen door. He also reassuringly gave me a sheet of instructions about how to install the bees.
Driving home on Atlanta’s I-85, busy even at that hour of the night, I kept worrying about swerves and the bees, but soon started dreaming about the hope for honey in my future. Thirty-five minutes later at 10:30 PM, I steered my van up my steep driveway, thinking nothing about the bump that happens as you make the turn.
I opened the back of the van to find bees everywhere. The bump as I turned up my driveway had shocked them and they were crawling all over the outside of the nucs! My only thought was that I needed to get them out of my car and onto the deck where my hives were located. I picked up the first nuc, opened the door to the kitchen and made a beeline to the deck, walking THROUGH my house, dripping the occasional bee onto the floor of my kitchen and sun porch.
I set the nuc down beside Destin and realized what I had done. Bees were where they were not supposed to be – in my house! So with the second nuc, I went around the house through the backyard and up the steps to the deck. Any bees who fell off along the way on the second trip could get back to their sisters in the hive.
Following Step One of the written instructions P.N. had handed me, I loosened the bungee cord on each nuc and left the bees to spend the rest of the night beside their future hive home. Just to keep them happy, I loaded the Boardman feeder up with sugar syrup and put it on the hive to entice them even more.
On Easter Sunday afternoon, following Steps Two and Three, I moved the bees from the nucs to the hives. Fully suited, I lifted each frame of brood, pollen and honey out of the nuc and put it in the center of the hive body. When the five frames from the nuc had been transferred to the hive, I divided five new foundation-filled frames on either side of the center.
It sounds simple, doesn’t it? However, some of the bees felt quite attached to the nuc and weren’t ready for the move to the hive. They hung out in the empty nuc box and occupied the upturned top of the nuc.
My instructions from P.N. stopped with Step Three: “Move the frames from the nuc to the hive body.”
What was I supposed to do with these rebellious bees? I called a fellow beekeeper from the list I had gotten at a local beekeepers’ meeting.
“Oh, just place the opened nuc and top in front of the hive. The bees will eventually just go to the hive with the rest of the bees and the queen,” he said.
A few hours later, the bees had moved into the hives and the nuc had only remnants of burr comb to show that they had lived there.
All through Easter Sunday, I found bees in my house. A few I rescued by covering them with a drinking glass, sliding a postcard under the glass and carrying the whole thing outside to free the bee. As one might imagine, my initial trek through the house resulted in more dead bees found over the days to follow than bees to rescue and return to the outdoors.
My bee suit, while made for someone much taller than my height of 5’2”, was keeping me from getting stung (so far!). My car and house gradually became bee-free. My grown daughters and my two dogs became reconciled to my new hobby. And my hives were buzzing with activity.
My adventures in beekeeping had begun.
Garden Helpers, by Jeannie Bell
I started out my first
year of beekeeping in the spring of 2006 with two nucs bought from P.N. and
Evelyn Williams. Fortunately, before I picked up the nucs, I had contacted the
Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Association and received a message from a member
stating that he would be glad to come to my house and guide me in transferring
the nuc bees to my hives which had already been set up. He was so helpful and
showed me some things to do that I was not aware of.
I became interested in beekeeping because I am a gardener and have noticed the lack off pollinators in my vegetable and fruit tree gardens. I can tell you that it makes a huge difference when you have bees around. My blueberries, cherry, apple, pear, and plum trees had considerably more fruit on them, and certainly the vegetable garden benefited from the bees. If I could just figure out how to keep the crows and squirrels out, then I would really be in heaven.
I did not go into my hives very much – I did watch them a lot from the outside and noticed all of their activity, but I didn’t feel compelled to see what was going on inside all that much. I put screen bottom boards on my two hives, added two supers to both hives, and managed to get about ten jars of honey without officially trying. My goal this year is to be a better manager and take the honey off when I am supposed to in August or September as opposed to February. Attending the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Association meetings has been so helpful and talking to so many members who have been at this for so long really helps the most. Hopefully this year I will gain enough confidence to actually claim that I am a beekeeper. We’ll see.
The Wonder, by Al Rodriquez
Yesterday evening I was sitting about ten feet from my hive (to the side of their flight path) just watching them launch and recover, launch and recover. Their trajectory is at a high angle due to a nearby tree line in my back yard. They make me wonder how it’s possible that they know exactly where to go and how to come back. I must have sat there for an hour, with my glass of Chardonnay, absolutely transfixed by their activity.
I read somewhere that some people believe the reason for our bee decline is that Aliens want Earth's most intelligent form of life.